Monday, December 10, 2012

Building the Grey Knight Army part one: Terminators

My goal this time around in Warhammer 40k was to build one squad at a time, paint it and then move on to the next squad so that I was not overwhelmed and ended up with a sea of grey on the board come Adepticon time here in Lombard Illinois.

An army in Warhammer 40k, or Fantasy for that matter, can take months to get used to. You have to explore every option, try every tactic and see for yourself how they play out. If you don't have a lot of friends games can be far and few between. At any rate the best you can usually do is a game a week. At 3-4 hours a pop that is a huge commitment. Sticking to one army has always been a problem for me so I have decided to take an approach that rewards painting with more models.

First up is the usual Grey Knight Terminator squad. This consists of 4 terminators and a Justicar who is basically the leader of the squad. Now each terminator when you design the army can be kitted out to have different weapons. The most important of the two are the Force Sword and the two handed Halberd. The Halberd confers +2 initiative in hand to hand combat while the Force Sword gives +1 to invulnerability to a save if they have it. So basically that takes a terminator invulnerability save to 4+. Which is nice. It is a tough call on which to use so what I decided to do was magnetize the hands of every Grey Knight to have swappable weapons.

First up was my General. This figure is actually Castellan Crowe but for most of the games we play it will be a Brother Captain. This figure was easy to assemble since he was Fine Cast.


Next up was the bases and the lower torsos attached to them for the terminators. I also put the grit and sand on the base so that when I prime them it seals the gravel in and gives the base some texture.

I prepped the torsos and got the legs affixed to the bases


I made sure to add the cape and added features to the Justicar to make him stand out. I then magnetized each weapon to to his hand so that they could be fully swappable. I use the magnets form this website and have a collection of various sizes:

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/products.asp?cat=10


Next up I put magnets on every Force Sword and Halberd and for now ignored the Falchions because I just do not see that load out working for me.

I made one Grey Knight terminator able to hold the Brother Banner which is like a standard bearer.



This method also saves money. While Games Workshop would prefer you to buy models for each loadout I just don't see that happening. However I will admit I was very impressed with this modeling kit as they provided tons of extra bits and cool add ons to put on the models. I had forgotten how much fun it was to work with a good kit and my terminators will for sure look different than most people's.

When all was said and done it was fun to do and here is the final look at the squad. Now the hard part: painting.



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